Life with a 17-month old

A: Good morning Ronan!

R: Hi mama!

A: Are you ready to get up?

R: No! (flings self back down onto mattress)

This morning Ronan slept in until 9am for the first time and when I finally got up with him he was as cheery as could be. He fed himself a blueberry yogurt for breakfast (messily) while I made coffee and did dishes, and then we played for a couple hours until we both went down for a nap. Sleep is so lovely!

This last month was my favorite so far (illness notwithstanding) and I have a feeling that may continue to be true for a while yet. The more interactive and expressive Ro becomes the more fun it is to watch him learn and grow. He continues to be a fundamentally cheery person with strong opinions and few fears. He likes to be carried a lot, so it's a relief that I can again hold him (at least for brief periods of time).

It's clear that while every child develops at a different pace, Ronan is a "words first" kind of guy, and I think he takes after both of his parents in that way. Living with Ronan right now is like living with a parrot (or rather ein Papagai...that's one of the words he knows in German but not English). He loves to use two-word phrases -- both repeated phrases and new constructions. Mustard-bokbok(eggs), water-puddle, mama-shoes, dada-hat, maomao-foot, up-dada, byebye-horsie, yucky-trash, yummy-noodles, milk bottle, beer bottle, mama coffee, hot mushrooms, not poopie, big umbrella, RoRo-boots, sweet potato… (Many words are probably only intelligible after experience: noonoes = noodles, oshes = shoes, ohgoo = yogurt, umpupu = computer).

He's starting to understand counting and plurals, and repeats one, two, three. One morning I was carrying an old and a new sippy full of milk and he said "two bottles" including the "s" on the end of bottle. I think that adding "s" to plurals is actually easier for him than noting that there are two or more, which is interesting because all of the asian foreign students in my classes do the reverse: they write "many neuron does." He's certainly learning rules in many domains.

Speaking of rules, Ronan's favorite books at the moment are no-no-yes-yes and yummy-yucky by Leslie Patricelli (he asks for both by name). He's totally interested in learning about rules and distinctions (what is trash, what is clean laundry, what is dirty, what do you eat). Having learned a rule, however, (e.g. "no biting") he sees inherent humor in flaunting it. He will bite your shoulder, then when you disapprove he will say very clearly "no biting" (smiling all the while). Hilarious!! Some people never outgrow this stage of humor. We just got him "potty" and "binky" by the same author, and an anonymous one of us recently wondered aloud whether she might have one titled "no you may not bloody well bite me you little punk."

Music

Ronan loves to hear us sing and is always asking for more songs. This week he started repeatedly singing his own song that merges part of the tune of "twinkle-twinkle" with the words "oh-hi-oh-hi-oh-hi-o." A little Gillian Welch influence?

Our own repertoire is slowly expanding as we get bored of singing the same few songs, but as he gets older some of the additions have had to get new words. For example, he really likes the song "What shall we do with a drunken sailor", but "put him in the rigging, let the gulls pick his eyes out" is just a little too gory for babies. And "put him in the bilge and make him drink it" sounds like we condone both the use of both force and playing in the potty. And so:

[To the tune of drunken sailor]

What shall we do with a sleeping Ronan (or baby)

What shall we do with a sleeping baby

What shall we do with a sleeping baby

Earl-ai in the morning

Tickle his toes until he wakes up

Tickle his toes until he wakes up

Tickle his toes until he wakes up

Earl-ai in the morning

Way-hay and up he rises

Way-hay and up he rises

Way-hay and up he rises

Earl-ai in the morning

Cuddle in his sleepsack with a bottle… (repeat)

Change his diaper and put him in a onesie… (repeat)

Pack his snacks in a little kid backpack… (repeat)

Climb in the car and we're off to school… (repeat)

When he's at school he can kiss Ella… (repeat)

Ronan wearing his daddy's old sweater!

While our daytime songs vary quite a bit, night-night songs are just a few:

• O wie wohl ist mir am abend (a German round)
• Now I walk in beauty (a round with two tunes)
• Go to sleep little baby (from O Brother Where Art Thou, a few words changed)
• Yellow Submarine (the Beatles tune but slowed way down)
• Seal Lullaby (text from Kipling, my own tune, though apparently there are many arrangements)
• Twinkle twinkle little star/little bat

Weather here is still lame...apparently "April showers" last most of April. Some of the more intrepid trees are starting to get leaf buds (just not the maples and such yet) and it's slowly sinking in that the spring I'm used to from CA (i.e. February) doesn't really happen here until May. I expect May will be lovely, with warm weather, fluorescent green leaves, and lots of time in Ro's favorite place "backyard" / "outside". Right, East Coast???

The first of (hopefully) many afternoons in the backyard

House quotes

I'm having a cataclysmically hard time convincing myself to lesson-plan for tomorrow's 4.5 hours of classes, and so: house quotes. (Only two, since we don't have a list at the moment and that's all my memory is up to maintaining.)

---

D: Ronan, can you say "wench"? (Ro is normally happy to repeat any word)

R: [pause]....."Mama"

---

D: All of our dependents want to drink out of the toilet.

Plague

Four days of last week were pure hell as we took our first parental venture to the ER, saw thermometer readings we'd never seen before, got vomited on, screamed at, sobbed on, clung to, and felt both helpless and intensely protective. The Chinese proverb/curse "may you live in interesting times" might as well be "may you be parents." The interesting times appear to be guaranteed.

That particular trouble is now distinctly over, and looking back it is hard to recreate the full sense of concern. But when things are getting worse and you don't know why and you're already treating what you thought was the problem, it does at some point get quite scary. And there's the fear (mine anyway) that the child who to this day has loved and trusted you will lose just a bit of that trust when you force him to take medicine, pin his arm for numbing agents (at least he doesn't have to feel the blood draws), and take him to doctors just when he most wants to be home. He said "bye-bye" repeatedly to each doctor and nurse from the moment they entered (until he was feeling better).

He didn't hold it against us, and we were amazed at how well he hung in there through what were clearly awful times and interventions he couldn't understand. It made me uncomfortably aware of any human's mortality, and of how fiercely attached I've become to this amazing little boy.

The specific causes are not so interesting. After eating nothing on Sunday he spiked a fever in the night, shook with chills, and could not sleep. Monday morning he tested positive for Strep throat. After starting on the antibiotic he continued to get worse and worse fevers (in a cycle…every time the tylenol wore off), but we waited patiently since it's supposed to take two days. After two days he had the highest fever I've ever seen and we were sent to the ER. There we learned the all-crucial trick of alternating tylenol with motrin every three hours so they don't ever fully wear off, and when we managed this we could keep it down to 103 and below. We also discovered tylenol suppositories, which are key for...well, I don't really need to explain that.

Ro at the hospital, finally feeling better

and listing body parts ("knee")

Three days in, Ro's bloodwork confirmed the presence of a nasty viral infection on top of the strep (further detailed ID takes longer) and the top candidates (the Dr. suggested Mono) can be worsened by the antibiotic he was on. After switching we saw more super high fevers when he managed to out-sleep a dose of fever reducer, then Thursday he was finally okay. Friday he was even cleared for daycare. Today I took him to campus to see students presenting their research projects and you would never know he had been sick.

The whole time he talked constantly, and only half the time intelligibly. He is now parroting back every word and phrase he can. Some he surely doesn't understand (David tried to teach him "bureaucracy" while we dropped off his passport application at the courthouse), but many complex words he does.

In his less intense moments, Ro:

• got introduced to his first DVDs (David Attenborough's Life of Mammals series),
• did loads of snuggling (he wanted to be held and walked nowhere for days on end), and
• said his first three word phrase (dada milk bottle) and first verby phrase (do that).

Some time between crises I decided they need an "it gets better project" for parents. Or perhaps a crisis line you call where some parent tells you how their son/daughter once had a fever of a hundred and ninety eleven, strep-mono-and-plague simultaneously, and a rash on the inside of his eyeballs and teeth -- yet went on to trust his parents, do well in school, and have a superpower that was mostly helpful and only a little annoying. I've talked to a number of such parents since, and it's nice to know.

I still occasionally catch a whiff of eau de baby vomit in the air.

What's Up-date

Words
I didn't think much about language acquisition before having a child (sometimes I wonder if I thought about any of this at all), but watching it unfold has been fascinating. Not enough to bug my house with microphones for the duration, mind you, but we did recently catch the transition from water as a hand sign to "wawa" to "water" in a matter of a weeks. If you follow the link, you can hear Deb Roy from the MIT media lab talk about the same transition in his kid (at 4:29).

Ro likes to repeat everything, including new things he's never heard and are far too hard for him. I might say "Paddington bear" and he'll say "Payeeobah", tickled to be making some of the same sounds. A subset of these words stick, and it's fun to see which ones do. Today's surprise for me was "mailbox." Dad must have taught you that one, kid.

Wadee/laudry=laundry
teddybo=teddybear
mi'kbabbol=milk bottle
aododo=avocado.

We are now into the realm of phrases ala:

dada up!
bye-bye doggie
no mo(re)
nigh-nigh teddybo
mama ox (this means "mama's socks" and he likes to fish them out of my drawer and leave them out where the cats can find and chew them. Yes, we have sock-eating cats).

Music (Hootenanny!)

A spot just opened up in a local music session for babies/toddlers and we signed on. It's run by musicians with kids -- The Nields (Katrina and Narissa) -- and while it's during Ronan's normal morning nap time, he stayed up for it just fine. And my goodness did he enjoy it! He sat in my lap playing with kid instruments, ran around saying "rrr-rrr-rrrr" excitedly, and even sat himself in Katrina's lap for a song (!). Yeah, I think her voice is pretty too. She reported that he stared into her mouth the whole time, and he's specifically requested that song ever since (with his "more" hand sign, and verbal "no-no-no" if I sing anything else). It will be a couple weeks before I can take him back but I can't wait!

Spring?

Ronan likes to put on D's hat and head for the door saying "bye-bye". He gets that you dress up to go out, and tried on D's purse earlier in a possible attempt to achieve a second walk. It was finally warm enough out after work today that we headed to a nearby park to watch the skateboarders, doggies, and other babies at the junglegym. Thank goodness for almost spring!* A toddler outside is so much better than a toddler inside!!

*Note to the universe: it doesn't count as Spring until there are leaves on trees. Little itty bitty leaves are fine, but there must be leaves!

At the park Ronan likes to pick up trash and walk it to the trash can (I have some understandably mixed feelings about this laudable trait, but at least now he understands not to put it in his mouth). Today he recited "yucky" all the way to the trash (his current favorite book is "Yummy Yucky"). He runs up to dogs, then cries if they get close. It's such a funny tension--he approaches with no fear and then suddenly the overwhelm of all that dog-ness is just too much. As long as he's wearing a hat he gets mistaken for an older kid because he's so chatty. Without a hat he gets mistaken for a younger baby (hair IS growing in slowly though!).

First trip away

I spent 4 days at a working group meeting a few states south of here last weekend. Good, tiring stuff, but Ronan did very well hanging with just Dada for the first time. He didn't seem weirded out to have mama on the other side of a video chat, but did insist that we both hold up phones!

Ronan on the phone and iChat

I can hardly remember the last time I got up later than 7am or went to bed before 1am. I just fell asleep while writing this. I need the evenings when I don't teach the next day to catch up and to relax a bit but ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. Oh, and ZZZZZZZZZZZ.

Confined to bed recovering from an acute back injury. Deadly boring, and for the most part I'm stuck at an angle where I can mouse but not type. So I fixed the dead links to pics on this site, watched videos, and slept a lot. I can walk unsupported as of this afternoon so tomorrow I look forward to seeing some sunshine.

Today I got to read some books to Ro in bed and he went back and forth between me and D giving multiple rounds of hugs. During that time he started to drink from my water bottle and repeated a phrase for the first time "no more." He also repeated his first German word as far as I know: "fuchsbau" (fox den). He may have others but I'm not usually the one reading the German books to him.

16 Months!!!

Ro & Co thaw out for a change

Swamped with work because we actually took a real vacation over spring break, but a few highlights:

• Spring break with good friends on an island off the coast of Florida. Hallelujah, but it's hard to be back! Especially in the blizzard on Monday. Oodles of pics (a subset!) here.
  
• While gone Ronan learned: Bree, Ba, Da, and (sort of) Ga for our friends names. When he names people he sometimes starts to think of other people whose names he knows and says their names too.
  
• Ronan is now very good at saying "beach." He does it in a fast way that makes us think of another word, though.
  
• First compound word yesterday morning! Bee-Ball (it's a jingly ball hung above a jingly bee)
  
• Second compound word/phrase later the same day: Milk-bottle
  
• New words this week: zebra, yipee, backpack (sort of). New sign: bird (made up since we were far from a signing dictionary at the time).

Ro is starting to exert more autonomy and verging towards occasional meltdowns. This is matched by ever increasing sweetness and intentionality of hugs, kisses (face-licks), and expressions of joy (he says "yay" a lot).

Watching this video of baby joy/confusion reminded me that there are already moments of Ronan that I miss -- like when I was in DC with a friend and the mere sight of her hand had Ronan in stitches (same age as the baby in the video). His sense of humor is much more sophisticated now: he likes to be chased, so the du-nuh, du-nah JAWS theme tends to get him toddling away, looking back, and giggling. He's big into finding people's belly buttons, and if you tickle his back he'll collapse in laughter and then sign "more."

Tonight I rocked him back to sleep after a tough waking and spent a while just sniffing his hair. Long after he's grown up I think I will have a fondness for California Baby rosemary soap/shampoo. And my baby!

Baby Boater...............................................................................Baby kayak passenger

Come On Into My Kitchen

Ronan demos his talent of getting into everything.

Literally INTO.

People with babies make lots of dishes. Turns out babies can help with that!

Ronan likes the kitchen because:

a) that's where "music" is (if you ask he'll point to the ipod). A family favorite is dancing to this rendition of the bluegrass standard "Come on in my kitchen."

b) he's just figured out there's a drawer we'd rather he didn't get into.

c) Dishwasher! Dishes! Ronan apparently knows where the pyrex bowls go, so if he manages to purloin one from the clean dishwasher we'll ask him to put it away. Toddle toddle toddle…open drawer…place bowl…close drawer. Babies are geniuses!! [You see, he has to impress us first so that when we start finding bowls in the cat box and the laundry bin we'll know he put them in the "wrong" places on purpose...].

But the real reason behind this post? A few days ago Ro emptied our grains cabinet and found a small box of couscous which makes excellent rattling sounds. So what does he do? He walks over to the open dishwasher, tips the box, and makes a shake-shake-shake sound over the place where we normally put dish detergent. A for imitation, kiddo.

New words this week: doll, pee-pee, poop, boot, peach, hello, Ella*

New signs: grapes, where?

*I usually skip his names for people but this was the first time I saw him name another child at daycare. He pointed at her and said "Eya" whereupon she toddled over and kissed him on the cheek. That girl is a lover (she hugs all the mommies), and now his first (peer) kiss!

This weekend I went to the campus botanical garden with our friends from Williamstown and returned later in the week. I loved the green, and Ronan loved walking down all the paths and harrassing the koi!